Notice and Wonder

On Fri, April 13, I visited Summit School in the Spokane Valley, now in its 4th year as an Expeditionary Learning school. I was impressed by the ability of children in the Kindergarten class to cooperate and to reflect on their performance.

The scene: The children were seated in a circle that included us adult visitors. They did a greeting around the circle, greeting the neighbor on each side of them by name.

Before starting the next activity, the teacher asked the children to talk about ideas of success. She noted that there might be other kinds of success besides doing the activity. Students offered: good listening or good directions, improvement in the activity, cooperation (working together). [I later noticed that these might be dimensions in a rubric for assessing the activity.]

The teacher introduced the task called "four-man pushup." The task involves four children lying on the floor in a square, where each child hooks their feet over the mid-back of one student and has another's feet over their back.

The first round was a demonstration by one team, with a chance to observe by the others.

The challenge was for the students to communicate to one another about what was required to get into this arrangement, who should lay down first, who put their feet up to fit the next child in, etc. Then when they were ready, they counted 1-2-3 and pushed up with their hands, raising all four bodies.

Following the activity, the teacher directed one child to get a marker and another a piece of paper and for the team to make notes on their performance. They each wrote an observation about the activity. All this happened quickly and smoothly, clearly this activity was practiced.

All the while the other children watched the performance and the teacher provide a little meta-analysis (noting the turn-taking during the reflections, or how one student offered to scribe for another who spoke her observation.

Divided into teams of four, the whole class did the activity, in an organized and cooperative manner.

What was also impressive was that the teams could quickly be formed, and that each team found its own leadership, did the activity, and moved on to reflected on what they did, making sure each make a written contribution.

Back in the big circle the teacher asked the children to reflect on their reflections (called Notice and Wonder) and look for "Big Ideas" that could help them in this activity and in other activities. The students came up with: "Worked together" and "On topic."